


a constant rain

by spookykingdomstarlight



Category: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016), Star Wars - All Media Types
Genre: Comfort, M/M, Melancholy, Pining, Pre-Rogue One
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-14
Updated: 2017-02-14
Packaged: 2018-09-20 07:16:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,748
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9480767
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/spookykingdomstarlight/pseuds/spookykingdomstarlight
Summary: There was a charge that filled the air whenever Galen was around—one he couldn’t blame on the ship or the cargo or the antigrav fields humming away around them—and Bodhi didn’t have the courage to ask if Galen felt it, too.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Merfilly](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Merfilly/gifts).



The rain never let up on Eadu as far as Bodhi could tell; every time he came, water poured from the gray-black skies and spattered against his shuttle’s viewport and the landing pad and everything in between.

Including Galen as he stepped forward, visible to Bodhi despite the dark color of his suit, while Bodhi made his final approach, slowly turning the shuttle and backing it toward the facility’s entrance. He made the landing quickly, could do it with his eyes closed at this point, and slammed his hand against the button that would release the hatch, hoping he didn’t seem too eager.

Pushing himself out of his chair, he approached the back, smiling, releasing the maglocks on each of the crates. As he flipped the switches on the antigrav field generators on each, they began floating a few inches off the floor. On his other routes, it was a bunch of stormtroopers who moved all the cargo into and out of his shuttle, shouting curt orders and hassling him if he took too long doing final checks. Here, it was Galen. Galen, whose mien grew progressively sadder each time Bodhi came to him, whose eyes were slow to warm and getting slower, though warm they did eventually.

“Hello, Bodhi,” he said as he approached, cordial as ever, pushing his dripping bangs out of his face. He blinked a few times, drops of water clinging to his eyelashes. “How are you doing?”

“I’m well, thanks,” he answered, pulling off the datapad clipped to the wall to check the manifest. His eyes scanned the document by rote and noted nothing unusual. The shipments were always the same and always in the same quantities. He could recite it by heart and verify it by touch. He had no idea what it all was officially, everything listed by inscrutable strings of numbers, but unofficially… there were rumors on Jedha.

The Empire, too, was getting sloppy, like they’d stopped caring about maintaining the fiction that had brought them to Jedha to begin with.

Bodhi probably should have hated Galen for his part in it. Anyone else in his position would, given what Galen and his scientists were taking from his homeworld. But he looked as trapped as Bodhi felt and so Bodhi couldn’t bring himself to judge him too harshly. What right did he have anyway? He, too, was complicit.

“That’s good to hear,” Galen said, the frost thawing around him. A smile even pulled at the corner of his mouth and his eyes crinkled. It was a good look for him, not that Bodhi could bring himself to admit to it except to himself.

There was a charge that filled the air whenever Galen was around—one he couldn’t blame on the ship or the cargo or the antigrav fields humming away around them—and Bodhi didn’t have the courage to ask if Galen felt it, too.

“Everything seems to be in order,” Bodhi said instead of all the things he wanted to speak about instead. _You look tired_ , he thought. _Are you lonely here? What do you do? Do you know they’re stripping Jedha’s temples for this?_ He handed over the manifest and tapped on the corner of the datapad where Galen’s fingerprint was required.

Galen’s thumb stilled a few inches above the screen. “How long have we known each other?” he asked. The datapad clattered against the top of one of the crates, forgotten and unsigned, as he turned the enormous weight of his attention to Bodhi.

To the exclusion of all else.

Bodhi swallowed, finding all sorts of interesting things on the floor. Perhaps it was time to do a thorough cleaning of it. The red, sandy grit of Jedha had ground itself in the grooves beneath his feet. _Look at all this dust. It doesn’t belong on Eadu_. “About a year now, I think.”

“Do you enjoy what you do?”

“It’s a job.” He rolled his shoulder and allowed himself to look at Galen. Biting at the inside of his mouth, he rummaged around for a bit of daring. “I’ve met some interesting people.” _One interesting person, anyway_. “I get to fly.”

“You enjoy flying?”

Bodhi nodded, puzzled and trying not to show it. They’d shared plenty of small talk in their time and none of it had ever been quite this awkward. In fact, Galen could probably have guessed most of these things about him. They’d probably even spoken about it, too. There was much they’d discussed in their time together, brief though it always was. In aggregate, it felt like everything. “I do.”

Moving deeper into the shuttle, Galen brushed his hands across one crate, then the next until he made his way up to the front cabin. He took the copilot’s seat and leaned forward, face turned upward to peek out of the viewport. This was new; he’d never headed up there before.

Bodhi followed him up, curious, and stood between the pair of chairs, one hand braced on each. His fingers beat out a rhythm against the headrest, as regular as the rain outside, and he didn’t think anything of doing it until Galen leaned back, his neck perilously close to Bodhi’s hand, a hand that wanted to reach out and touch.

And then Galen twisted around, his jaw brushing against Bodhi’s knuckles as he looked up, a morning’s growth of facial hair scraping against Bodhi’s skin. It hadn’t been intentional, Bodhi was sure, and the contact lasted a second, if that, but it let slip a clamoring ache in his heart, a storm of his very own.

“Do you ever wish that things could be different?” Galen asked, earnest, his own needs visible through the cracks in the politely interested look he directed Bodhi’s way. It crept perilously along, that need, just under the surface and maybe—

Bodhi pulled his hand back, smoothed it down his thigh as though he’d been caught playing with something that wasn’t his. “I—” _Yes_ , he should have said. It would have been the truth. Or half of it anyway. Most of it even. But a small part of him… “I wouldn’t be here if they were.” That mattered to Bodhi, even if he couldn’t explain why exactly. Galen was just a man like any other. Why he should have made such an impact on Bodhi’s life when they were only this to each other?

It had kept him up at night, trying to puzzle that out. So of course Galen had had the audacity to ask. And though Bodhi felt Galen demanded no real answers from him, he wanted to give them to Galen anyway.

But he couldn’t. The vocabulary didn’t live inside of him.

“Are you content with that?”

 _No_. He shrugged. “I can deal with it.” _I_ have _dealt with it_.

Galen nodded, that crack in his veneer widening as he tried to smile and found a bitter twist instead.

—maybe Bodhi could take a chance. Leaning forward, he brushed his thumb across Galen’s cheekbone, smoothing at those shattered pieces of Galen that shone through. But Bodhi wasn’t skilled in the art of repair when it came to people and Galen only seemed to fall apart more fully beneath his touch, his breath hitching and his eyes fluttering closed.

Bodhi lost himself in those minute gestures, unsure how to proceed and unable to find guidance in them. He’d stepped over the precipice without thinking and now that he was here, he didn’t know what to do.

His heart climbed his throat, lodged itself in the place where his voice should have been.

But just as Bodhi was going to pull his hand away, Galen grabbed hold of him, his fingers wrapping easily around the bone and sinew and skin of his wrist. His touch was cool, rain-soaked and clammy with Eadu’s persistent chill. The flash of a passing TIE patrol streaked across the sky outside, caught in the illumination of a distant lightning strike. Just like the rest of them. Here, they were all caught in the violent light of storms.

On a different world, they could have been more to each other. Bodhi believed that.

On this world, they had what little Bodhi could give—and what little Galen would allow himself to take.

It wasn’t nearly enough. It never would be. Nothing _could_ be.

“I’m glad it was you they sent,” Galen said, a concession Bodhi never would have thought to want. “It’s selfish, but…”

“I don’t care if it is.” Arrogant, the words sounded. So unlike Bodhi that they came as a surprise even to him, the man who’d spoken them.

That bitter smile flickered across Galen’s mouth again, fathomless, so much history behind it that Bodhi couldn’t parse, history that didn’t belong to him. “I’ve been selfish enough in this life, I think.”

 _Not with me_.

Bodhi’s tongue wet his lips. His teeth bit at the inside of his cheek.

Galen pushed himself to his feet, his shoulders hunching to avoid his head hitting the equipment mounted above the chair. “Thank you, Bodhi. You’re a generous man.”

“I’m not—”

Galen’s fingers brushed at a tendril of hair that had escaped the band Bodhi had pulled it back into and then settled against his neck. Surely Galen could feel the effect he had on Bodhi, the rapid, deep _thump thump thump_ of his pulse as it thundered against Galen’s palm. “You are.”

He pressed a kiss to the corner of Bodhi’s mouth as he stepped past, so close and yet not close enough; under different circumstances, it might’ve been a friendly goodbye, fond and full of care, love and not love at the same time. Bodhi’s hands fisted at his thighs to stop him from grabbing hold of Galen and never letting go.

“It has been good to see you,” Galen said, raising his hand to his mouth and keying the comm sewn into the hem of his sleeve. A handful of stormtroopers spilled out onto the landing pad from the facility entrance and marched forward, taking over the work of moving the crates from Bodhi’s ship to Galen’s laboratories. An unusual sight for an unusual day.

“You, too,” Bodhi answered, quiet, so only Galen could hear it.

Next time, he would be braver.

Next time, he would say more.

Next time, he would tell Galen what he felt—about Galen and Jedha and Eadu and the Empire that controls them all.

Maybe then it would be enough, what they had.


End file.
